The mayor wasn’t behind his desk, so the policeman told the driver, a lanky, hungry-looking fellow, to go out and find him. [[95]]
“Put your handbills over there,” the officer told us, pointing to a table beside the room’s big desk. His scowl deepened as we obeyed him. “It’s plain,” he added, “that you kids don’t know much about the ordinances of this here town.”
I was less frightened now. For I had come to realize all in an instant how easily I could get in touch with Dad if necessary. He would come in a hurry if I telephoned to him that I was in trouble. And he’d know just what to do to gain my release.
“What’s the idea of arresting us?” Scoop spoke up. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Is that so?” Bid put in, letting out his neck. “My Uncle Ike, I want to tell you, is the town bill poster—”
“Shut up!” thundered the policeman. “I’ll do the talkin’.”
Scoop and I exchanged glances.
“Is it against the law,” my chum inquired, getting a clue to the cause of our arrest from what Bid had blurted out, “to peddle bills in this town?”
“You bet your boots it is,” Bid waggled. “For the council gave my Uncle Ike the right——”
“Shut up!” bellowed the policeman a second time. “If I have to tell you ag’in,” he threatened, [[96]]acting as though he was talking across the continent to some one in New York City, “I’ll throw you out.” He turned to us. “We don’t ’low every Tom, Dick an’ Harry to throw bills ’round our town to litter up our streets. Not by a jugful! We’ve got a town bill poster an’ it’s his job to ’tend to distributin’ handbills an’ puttin’ up posters. That was him I just sent after the mayor.”